Beautiful Brains
by Madam Callisto
Summary: "Normal people didn't usually react with this bizarre mixture of sexual charged excitement and anxiousness at the prospect of meeting a serial killer, Sherlock knew that, but normalcy was hardly something he prided himself in." An alternate S1 ending.


Normal people didn't usually react with this bizarre mixture of sexual charged excitement and anxiousness at the prospect of meeting a serial killer, Sherlock knew that, but normalcy was hardly something he prided himself in. There simply was no better way, in his mind, to react when finally given the chance to meet with someone who might actually be his intellectual equal. While this... _Moriarty _might have been blowing up innocent civilians and funding serial killers all in the attempt to get his attention, the fact remained that he given Sherlock something that no other person in his life had ever given him.

He'd given him a challenge.

Sherlock tried his best to keep his excitement in check when he entered the swimming pool. It was best not to seem too eager to meet a man who had already shown himself to have a habit of killing those who knew the slightest thing about him. John had been upset with him over his lack of care regarding the twelve people Moriarty had blown up, it was to be expected of course. John's sense of morals were far too strong for him to ever let Sherlock's callousness on the subject be forgotten. Sherlock took a deep breath of the chlorine scented water and sighed. John would be taken care of later, for now he had much bigger issues to handle.

"Brought you a little 'getting to know you' present." He shouted into the empty swimming pool, waving the memory stick up in the air dramatically. He inspected the swimming pool as he walked, eyes scanning the tiled floor and the lengths of the pool. "That what it'll been for, isn't it?" he continued "All your little puzzles making me _dance. _All to distract me from-."

A red stain caught Sherlock's eye.

Something was wrong.

There were scuff marks as well. The soles of three—no, four men's shoes had been dragged across the floors surface. Sherlock's eyes darted back and forth across the floor. There had been some kind of struggle here recently, very recently. As many as six people might be dead. The small red mark was a blood. Someone had been dragged away from this place, and the evidence quickly covered up. A shiver of excitement ran up his spine. He hadn't been there more than thirty seconds and he was already intrigued.

To his left Sherlock heard the sound of a door swinging open. His hand reached up a second to feel for the gun he'd left tucked under his clothes.

And then out walked John and the ever turning gears in Sherlock's head screeched to a grinding halt.

"Evenin', Sherlock."

Sherlock's mouth hung open, for a moment he'd forgotten how to speak. John wasn't supposed to be here. He'd left the message for Moriarty. He was supposed to be meeting _Moriarty_.

Sherlock blinked, and the steps to forming coherent words returned to him.

"John." He said, his voice not disguising his confusion, but he was too caught off guard to care. He was standing in this empty swimming pool, staring at John. John smiled at the bewildered look on Sherlock's face.

"Yeah, Sherlock. Me."

"No..." Sherlock said shaking his head, trying desperately to restart his brain. This couldn't be right. He was missing something. _He had to be missing something._

But as he watched John leaning comfortable on the balls of his feet, hands in his pockets, small smile on his lips, as he in-turn watched Sherlock, his confusion grew. Sherlock couldn't bring his mind to come on any other conclusion. He wasn't in danger or being threatened. He wasn't being forced into doing this. John was just the one in control.

"You can't be." Sherlock said. A stupid thing to say, he thought in retrospect.

"Oh, I can't?" John raised an eyebrow. "That's news to me. Why exactly not?"

"Because you're..." Because you're the moral one, the righteous one. You're supposed to be the one who stops me from going too far, he thought. "Because...you're _John._"

John smiled and shook his head, walking closer to Sherlock as he did. "Wow, that was a very un-Sherlock answer. 'I couldn't because I'm John?'" His voice lowered an octave, the smile slipping from his face. "It's not like it'd be the first time I killed for you..." A shiver ran up Sherlock's spine.

"Those times were different-"

"Right, because you were in danger." John said with a nod.

"Yes." Sherlock sounded breathless as he spoke.

"No, not _really. _I wouldn't have ever let anything happen to you." John was now less than a foot away. Sherlock resisted the urge to step back. His panic and confusion were finally beginning to fade into curiousness and fascination. "Besides, I had a much better reason this time."

"And what was that?" Sherlock asked, his fear completely forgotten in his desire for understanding.

"You were bored, of course."

John all but filled Sherlock's field of view with his proximity. Not that he could look away even if he wanted too.

"Me? All of this, the deaths, the bombs, you're telling me you did it all to-"

"To make you happy." John said with a shrug. "Do you know what it's like, watching you when you're bored? God, not even including the holes in our walls it's horrible to watch. I can't stand watching you waste such a beautiful mind like that. Your brain needs constant…stimulation, and I thought I might be the man to give it you."

The gears in Sherlock's head had begun to turn again. _Could all of it really be true? Uncharacteristically amoral actions aside, was John really brilliant enough to have set all of this up? He couldn't possibly have had the resources to fund all of this-not unless he'd faked his financial distress for months...but even then Sherlock would have been able to notice if John had been sneaking off to run the London criminal underworld—and what the hell was John doing?_

Sherlock's heart skipped a beat as he felt John's hand running across his waist along his shirt. He looked down at the man, never breaking eye-contact with him as his hands ran down his back. Sherlock held his breath as John's hand dig into the back of his shirt and pull out the gun he'd hidden there.

"Sorry bout that, Sherlock." John said, pulling the weapon away from him. "But I think this is mine."

Sherlock let out the breathe he hadn't realized he'd been holding. _That had been odd. Odd but not entirely unpleasant. John seemed to be just full of surprises tonight. But his strangely provocative behavior a second early wasn't the big issue. Him being Moriarty was the issue-_

John sighed. "Oh will you just stop it Sherlock, you're thinking so loud it's starting to give me a headache."

"Fine, I'll talk out loud then. How exactly did you fund these little projects of yours?" He began. "Unless you've got a secret talent for disguise that far exceeds my own, I should've noticed if you had these kinds of resources. And then there were the phone calls from Moriarty's victims. You stood right next to me the entire time I was on the phone with them, and yet you clearly made no movements. There were no obvious signs of recognition and don't try to tell me texted it all to them because I remember very specifically what your fingers were doing."

John's eyebrows were raised so high that they look in danger of being obscured by his hair line.

"And there's our two past cases and the two times you saved my life. They were both so close that you could've very easily messed up and gotten me killed if you were really Moriarty-though hypothetically the cabbies drugs could've been switched-"

"Sherlock."

"But then there's today. Even if your sense of morals would allow you to kill for my amusement, to make me a puzzle, I don't think I misjudged you enough to be unable to foresee you being the type of man to strap a child into a bomb-"

"."

Sherlock didn't slow down. "And then there's the fact you choose to be my flat mate. That was a stupid risk for any person in your position to take." Sherlock wasn't sure when it had started but suddenly he became aware that he was smiling. "Why on earth would you risk being accidentally discov-"

The press of John's lips against his own cut him off in his tracks. John's hands were tight around the collar of his shirt, pulling his down further into the kiss. For a moment he was still, stumped by this latest development, and then he found himself pushing himself back against John, his lips crushing themselves back hungrily against his. It lasted only a few seconds and then John pulled himself away with a smile.

"Does that answer your question?"

Sherlock smiled back in response, and pulled the shorter man back in for a second kiss, his hands sneaking their way under his sweater to feel warm skin beneath them. _His questions could afford to wait until a little later._

The detective part of his brain once again turned off, he paid no attention to the dark bruises that ran across John's flesh and the small holes in his undershirt, content to simply live in that one sweet moment. The moment where his tongue danced with John's, clothes were thrown absentmindedly into piles...

...and where the blood of James Moriarty and his team of snipers soaked unseen into the tiles of a pools locker room.

To have that strange, beautiful mind of Sherlock's finally focused on him instead of Moriarty, instead of anybody else, to feel his body move against his and hear him call out John's name in pleasure—it made the kidnapping more than worth it.

**END**


End file.
